Climate Justice and Human Rights (eBook)

Dr. Tracey Skillington is Lecturer in Sociology at University College Cork, Republic of Ireland, where she had received her PhD in visual culture and the contemporary political spectacle. Her research interests include issues of justice that arise in relation to climate change and transnational memory projects. Recent publications include ‘Climate Change and the human rights challenge: extending justice beyond the borders of the nation state’ in The International Journal of Human Rights (2012), and ‘Perspectives on Climate Change’ in a special issue of the European Journal of Social Theory (2015) for which she was Editor.

1. IntroductionAnthropocene futures and their emancipatory potentialTransformations in the socio-cognitive framing of climate change since the 1990sPollution practices as practices of dominationThe state as a moral political agent of justice in relation to climate changeCompleting the democratic circle on climate justice2. The Idea of Climate JusticeIntroductionRawls Theory of JusticeCritical perspectives on Rawls Law of PeoplesBenefits, costs, rights and responsibilities across international communitiesCommon subjection to climate change risk as a basis for a new model of global justiceDefining justice for an expanded commons: The perspective of climate justice coalitions3. Resource inequalities, domination and the struggle to reclaim democratic freedomsIntroductionDenying the opportunity and process aspects of democratic freedom - the case of global land acquisitionsClaims to extreme energy sources as claims to Justice? The case of hydraulic frackingAddressing governance deficienciesConclusion4. Climate Change and its security implicationsIntroductionWar in the national interestOn the rights of peoples or the rights of states to self-determination over natural resources - the case of the ArcticToward a transnational order of peace on natural resources distributionConclusion5. Climate Justice without freedom - Legal and political responses to climate change and forced migrationIntroductionThe changing circumstances of justice under conditions of growing natural resource scarcityLacking legal definition and human rights presence - the current status of teh climate displacedDefining rights to mobility in 'abnormal times'Conclusion6. On the rights of the peoples of dissappearing statesIntroductionAddressing the lacuna in international law on the rights of peoples of dissappearing statesNew contexts for the application of the rescue principleCollective human rights obligations to displaced communitiesTransnational democratic settlements on resource allocation and sovereign state reconfigurationConclusion7. What is common about 'our common future'? Maintaining the human rights status of waterClaiming rights to the resources of the commons - a complicated affairThe case of trans-boundary rivers.- Disputing the human rights status of waterSharing water resources with non-excludable others8. Conclusion - Towards a transnational order of climate justiceAddressing current democratic deformitiesExtending the 'who' of justice to include future generationsThe communicative empowerment of aggrieved publicsEstablishing greater reciprocity amongst all self-determining communities